Philip Ludwig's "slippery tongue" got him into trouble with his second wife and his church, which resulted in the family moving often.
[3] On April 14, 1706, he was received as a citizen at Lambsheim, where he became an innkeeper of the Stag Inn (Hirschwirt), which was owned by his parents-in-law, Anna Maria and Hartman Stähler.
[6] He served at least 13 congregations in southeastern Pennsylvania[7] between Philadelphia and the Blue Ridge Mountains and between the Susquehanna and Delaware Rivers.
For eighteen years, he traveled 100 miles a month on horseback on dangerous trails, through swamps, and along steep precipices.
Boehm helped form and lead the congregations, preached services, conducted catechetical training, and administered sacraments and rites.
[6] In 1727, two years after Boehm began his ministry, an ordained German Reformed minister named George Weiss arrived in Pennsylvania.
[4] His arrival started a controversy, as Weiss argued that Boehm's ministry was in violation of Reformed polity, and was therefore invalid.
William Penn offered that "all persons living in this province who confess and acknowledge the one Almighty and Eternal God… shall in no ways be molested or prejudiced for their religious persuasion."
George Thomas, deputy governor of the state, said that '"Germans had imported with them all the religious whimsies of their own country" and even sub-divided further in America.'
[9] In 1730, the churches in the Philadelphia area were left under the sole care of Boehm after Weiss traveled to Europe to raise money for their cause in America.
Officers of six congregations Falkner Swamp, Oley, Philadelphia, Skippach, Tulpehocken, and White Marsh signed the document.
[5] In 1747, Boem and Schlatter organized the first convention, called Coetus, of the German Reformed Church in the United States.
After her father died, her mother married a second time in 1696 to Johann Philipp Scherer,[11] who also immigrated to Pennsylvania and was a deacon of the Reformed Church in Whitemarsh.